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April 1, 2026: A "Weiner Wednesday" That Will Live in Infamy
On Tuesday evening, local social media exploded with scandalous news: An outside law firm is investigating sexual harassment claims from Police Chief Axel Henry and other city employees against St. Paul Mayor Kaohly Her. In a letter sent on April 1 to St. Paul City Attorney Irene Kafrom, Henry’s attorney states that “litigation is ‘reasonably foreseeable.'” (The lawyer representing Henry, it should be noted, is former GOP gubernatorial candidate/Alpha News pal Chris Madel.)
The verified claims, so far, are mostly hot-dog related. The letter includes a screenshot of a text message from Her bemoaning that she can’t attend “Weiner Wednesday,” an unsanctioned regular event where employees get together and eat glizzies.
“When she wraps you up in a blanket after you gave her a good weinering,” Her continues in the text thread before sharing an image of a swaddled baby. “The term ‘wienering’ is often used as sexual innuendo on the internet,” reporters and editors at the Strib helpfully explain. KARE 11’s Lou Raguse, via an anonymous source, also has details on an alleged incident in a workout locker room between Her and a female police officer.
While the image from the law firm’s letter has been redacted, an anonymous source tells the Strib that the face of a St. Paul police officer on Her’s security detail had been superimposed over that baby.
Lawyers for Henry are calling for the city of St. Paul to “immediately take all steps necessary to perform a full filesystem extraction of each of Mayor Her’s mobile phones.”
MN Man Could Face Six Years for Hosting Anti-ICE Meeting
Back in June, the U.S. Department of Justice charged 15 Minnesotans with impeding Operation Metro Surge goons by doing things like posting on Instagram, knocking paperwork out of an agent’s hand, throwing snowballs, and talking about protesting on Signal. A 94-page indictment claims that all were members of “antifa”—a nebulous, mostly imaginary group officials don’t seem able to define.
Based on what happened in Chicago, there’s a chance that some of these charges could end up getting dropped, but it’s still a looming darkness for all of the accused. “This isn’t just about us. It’s about trying to scare everybody who opposes ICE,” Erik Davis, a Buddhist studies prof at St. Paul's Macalester College, tells Sam Levin at the Guardian.
“[Davis] is not accused of violent acts, taking any specific actions at protests nor having any encounters with ICE agents,” Levin writes. He’s potentially facing six years in prison for attending and organizing meet-ups to discuss protesting.
Then there’s Natasha Rakotz, who could be sentenced to 26 years for assault and conspiracy for allegedly side-swiping an agent’s car while tailing it from Minneapolis to Hudson, Wisconsin. The indictment, however, fails to list a victim name or describe what injuries or vehicular damage were caused by the incident.
“I really believe these charges are going to get dropped because they’re unfounded and ridiculous,” she says. “But I feel like the process is the punishment.”
Speaking of Abuse of Power
A recent study from the Physicians for Human Rights and the Human Rights Center at the University of California Berkeley found 94 examples of weapon misuse during Operation Metro Surge.
Compiling police reports, lawsuits, news stories, and social-media posts, the center found 412 examples of misuse across the U.S. from June 2025 to June 2026. Interestingly, the tools of crowd control were found to vary from state to state; while California protestors were pelted with rubber bullets, four out of five incidents in Minnesota involved chemical irritants.
“It’s a systemic issue,” Kimberly Saltz, a legal fellow at the Physicians of Human Rights, tells Katrina Pross at Sahan Journal. “This is not a one-off. This is not a singular bad actor. This is showing a very clear pattern of misuse.”
UnitedHealth Climbs Fortune’s List
Whether it’s gaming the Medicare system, using AI to incorrectly deny care, or trying to stop news organizations from reporting negative things, Eden Prairie-based UnitedHealth Group Inc. knows how to make money. If you’re interested in seeing that quantified, look no further than Fortune’s latest report, which ranks the insurance giant as the fourth largest company in the world, trailing only behind Amazon, Walmart, and Chinese utility company State Grid. It ranked 7th in last year's report.
“The healthcare giant reported revenue of $447.6 billion last year, an 11.8% increase from the year before, and profits of $12.1 billion, a 16.3% decrease,” Abby Bulger writes at the Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal.
Other local companies that made the list include Minneapolis’s Target Corp. (96th), Minneapolis’s U.S. Bancorp (373th), and Richfield’s Best Buy Co. Inc. (385th).
